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This Wake-Up Cup Is Fair-Trade Certified

The singer Michael Franti, left, with a Sumatran coffee farmer in a new video.

GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE has been helping consumers wake up for more than three decades, but a new advertising campaign is meant to be an eye-opener of a different sort.

In recognition of October being Fair Trade Month, the brand is seeking to educate coffee drinkers about fair-trade certification, which many people may vaguely associate with worthiness without quite understanding it.

“I think about fair trade sometimes like antioxidants,” said Jonathan Yohannan, executive vice president for corporate responsibility at Cone Communications, one of several agencies working on the campaign, referring to substances often praised for their health benefits. “You know it’s good for you, but you don’t really know what it means.”

Green Mountain Coffee will help explain what fair trade means with a campaign called “Great coffee, good vibes, pass it on.” Print and online ads will direct consumers to the brand’s Facebook page, which will feature videos with the musicians Grace Potter and Michael Franti visiting certified coffee farms in Colombia and Sumatra.

“The videos are all about showing an authentic experience with fair trade, with the celebrities seeing firsthand the impact that fair trade has,” said Derek Archambault, senior brand manager for Green Mountain Coffee.

The brand works with the nonprofit Fair Trade USA, which certifies that producers conform to labor and environmental standards, and links farmers directly to companies rather than enriching middlemen.

When companies buy fair-trade coffee, they pay a community-development premium in addition to the base price. For every pound of conventionally grown coffee, the premium is 20 cents; for organically grown coffee, it is 50 cents, with 20 cents going to community development and the remaining 30 cents to farmers.

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In 2011, when more than 138 million pounds of certified coffee was imported to the United States, fair-trade premiums totaled about $17 million. The money went to cooperatives of farmers, who voted to apply it to development projects like new schools, health care facilities and equipment to improve the productivity of farms and the quality of their coffee.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters — the parent company, which also produces brands like Tully’s Coffee and, under a licensing agreement, Newman’s Own Organics — is the largest purchaser of fair-trade coffee in the world. It imported about 50.3 million pounds in 2011, or 24 percent of its raw coffee purchases, according to the company and Fair Trade USA.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters also owns Keurig, which makes systems that brew single-serve pods called K-Cups. Green Mountain spent $22.9 million on advertising in 2011, compared with $100.5 million for Starbucks, $37.5 million for Folgers and $24.9 million for Maxwell House, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

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One of the new online videos opens with Mr. Franti, the musician, who says, “I’m here in Sumatra teaming up with Green Mountain Coffee, where I’m going to learn about how fair trade makes a better cup of coffee and a better quality of life for farmers.”

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A print ad for Green Mountain Coffee highlights the relationship the brand has with farmers through a fair-trade certification program.

In the video, a farmworker tells Mr. Franti that premiums from the fair-trade program enable him to send his children to school.

An on-site Green Mountain employee in the video adds that through such direct relationships with small farmers, the brand can help pinpoint the locations on a farm, like the side of a mountain with a certain amount of sun exposure, that yield the most drinkable coffee.

The videos with Mr. Franti and Ms. Potter — which are by Y&R New York, part of Young & Rubicam Group, owned by WPP — will be featured on Green Mountain’s Facebook page, which has more than 656,000 followers, and on YouTube.

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Print ads for the campaign, also by Y&R, begin appearing Friday in publications like People, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly. Digital ads will be introduced Monday on Web sites like YouTube, Hulu and Oprah.com.

Ms. Potter will perform live exclusively on the brand’s Facebook page on Oct. 9, and Mr. Franti on Oct. 24.

In 2011, Fair Trade USA helped farmers and farmworkers earn $22 million in premiums beyond the base price for their products.

While a wide range of products can receive fair-trade certification, including cocoa, nuts, wine and flowers, coffee is by far the most dominant. In 2011, the $17 million in coffee community-development premiums accounted for 77 percent of all premiums.

For Fair Trade Month, which the nonprofit organization is spearheading, other companies will also be promoting the cause. Whole Foods, for example, will hold sampling events with a range of certified products at more than 100 of its stores.

Mary Jo Cook, who calls herself the chief impact officer at Fair Trade USA, said she could recall no other marketing campaign devoted to fair-trade practices by a brand with the scope of the Green Mountain Coffee campaign.

“It’s a giant step in going out and engaging consumers so that they understand what fair trade is,” Ms. Cook said, adding that the campaign would have the effect of promoting fair-trade goods in categories besides coffee.

“We believe this will have a halo effect for fair trade as a movement, which is what we’re here to support,” she said.

Andrew Hetzel, founder of CafeMakers, which provides strategic planning and brand development for coffee businesses, said the coffee industry tended to focus more on social and environmental issues than other industries.

“You don’t see an Apple campaign for how well they treat workers in factories,” Mr. Hetzel said, referring to reports of poor working conditions at factories owned by some of the technology giant’s subcontractors. “But the coffee industry in particular seems to be especially sensitive to the environment and to workers.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 28, 2012, on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: This Wake-Up Cup Is Fair-Trade Certified. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe